Electronic health record applications (EHRs) are computer-executable applications utilized in healthcare environments. EHRs are generally configured to perform various tasks related to healthcare including patient intake tasks, insurance processing tasks, billing tasks, health record maintenance tasks, and so forth. Some EHRs have been configured with electronic prescription functionality, where an EHR can receive input from a healthcare worker causing the EHR to create an electronic prescription for a patient, and the EHR can be configured to direct the electronic prescription to a pharmacy specified by the healthcare worker and/or the patient. A device operated by the pharmacy (e.g., a computing device) can receive the electronic prescription from the EHR, and the device can notify a pharmacist at the pharmacy that the prescription is to be filled. The pharmacist may then fill the prescription.
When an EHR generates an electronic prescription for a controlled substance (e.g., a medication that has a high potential for abuse by a patient, such as a substance classified as being in schedules 2-5 by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration as of Feb. 13, 2018), the components of the prescription (e.g., identity of the medication, dosage information, pharmacy information, etc.) are typically immutable once set forth to the EHR. Thus, at the point of care, the patient must generally inform a healthcare worker prescribing the controlled substance as to which pharmacy is to be specified in the electronic prescription. A client EHR executing on a client computing operated by the healthcare worker may then receive input from the healthcare worker that is indicative of the components of the prescription (including an identity of a pharmacy), and the EHR can construct the electronic prescription and transmit the electronic prescription to a device operated by the pharmacy. However, the patient may not know which pharmacy he or she wishes to obtain the controlled substance from at the time of prescribing.
One approach to the above-identified problem is to configure the EHR to generate an incomplete electronic prescription that includes the necessary components of the prescription with the exception of the identity of the pharmacy. The EHR can then store the incomplete electronic prescription in a data store, and sometime later, the EHR can receive the identity of the pharmacy that the patient has selected to provide the controlled substance. The EHR can then generate a complete electronic prescription for the controlled substance. However, due to technological and regulatory factors, conventional EHR architectures are not amenable to generating an incomplete electronic prescription for a controlled substance. Additionally, electronic prescription workflows typically require electronic prescriptions to be electronically signed and verified within a short duration of time (e.g., a few minutes) after generation, which is not possible when the electronic prescription is incomplete. Extending the duration of time for the electronic prescription to be verified may increase the chance of unauthorized access of the electronic prescription and hence is undesirable.